


End With You

by Magnolia822



Series: Brokeback Merlin [1]
Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-01
Updated: 2012-04-01
Packaged: 2017-11-02 21:47:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/373678
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Magnolia822/pseuds/Magnolia822
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ten years after the end of his affair with Arthur, Merlin finds himself on the road to the one place he thought he’d never return.</p>
            </blockquote>





	End With You

**Author's Note:**

> I've been thinking about Brokeback Mountain and I kind of wanted to do my own version (only with a very different ending), so this story is loosely based on the movie/short story. Thanks to mab_di for the preread/beta.

  
The drive from Galveston to Hutchinton, Kansas takes thirteen hours and eleven minutes. Merlin stops twice along the way—both times he pisses, grabs a cup of tepid coffee from whatever shitty roadside café he can find, and fingers the postcard in his back pocket.  
  
It arrived three days before, and Merlin had thought on it a while before making his decision. When he finally did, he quit his job at the wharf and collected his earnings, packed up his meager belongings, and left the rent he owed on his bed. Whatever happened, he’d be better off away from Galveston. The city had begun to itch at him like a rough hide.  
  
 _Gwen’s gone. Come._ was all the note said. No address, no signature. Not that Merlin needed any of that. He knew where Arthur lived with his wife and two kids. Daughters. They must be big by now, halfway to grown. The last time Merlin had seen Elena and Alice it had been from a distance. Their mother had been holding one of them, wrangling the other on the opposite side of McMurty’s Feed and Tack. Arthur kept glancing back at his family . . . Elena was a handful, blonde like her daddy but with her mother’s light chocolate skin. It had been enough.  
  
“I can’t do this . . . not anymore . . .” Merlin had said. He’s never forgotten the desperation on Arthur’s face.  
  
Those words had broken him, probably broken them both, but Arthur had a life. He had the things he’d wanted—his girls, his ranch. Merlin hadn’t been able to resent him, not really. It wasn’t a kind place to live for men like them, not in the open. Arthur’s father would have disowned him in a heartbeat.  
  
As Merlin climbs back into his beat-up Toyota the second time he sighs, takes a long sip of coffee and starts the engine. Five more hours to go. It’s almost impossible not to think back to those early years while driving on the empty road, especially when a certain song comes on that reminds him of Arthur.  
  
Merlin had only been a temporary hand at Pendragon Ranch when Arthur’d taken over from his daddy. People hadn’t liked Uther, but they’d respected him, so when his blond upstart son came waltzing in from whatever expensive college he’d been studying at, it had taken him a while to prove himself. Cattlemen appreciate leadership but they also want to do things the way they like, the way they’ve always done them. Arthur didn’t understand that, not at first, and so he went through droves of men until he finally settled on a crew. Merlin somehow wound up being permanent, partly because he kept out of Arthur’s way, partly because he was good at what he did, and he knew it.  
  
He hadn’t been trying to impress Arthur; there was something about the young Pendragon that made his blood anxious, as if even then his body had known that if they ever started something it could never be undone. He wouldn’t see Arthur for days, even weeks at a time, depending on where the cattle were grazing. Arthur generally stayed at the main house to oversee affairs, but then he started riding out, staying a day or two. Soon, he began extending his visits even longer, hanging around nights with the men around the fire, and then with Merlin alone after the others had headed to bed.  
  
The first time they’d fucked, it had been fueled by lust and the driving need of men away from women. Or so Merlin had thought. Quick and brutal as the coupling was, Merlin had come untouched, Arthur’s prick deep within him. Neither had spoken, but when Arthur had given him a shaky kiss on the cheek, Merlin’s guts clenched tight. He didn’t want to get attached to a man like this—a man who’d never really understand him, who would eventually do what was expected. But how could he resist when Arthur came the next week, and the next, all blond hair and serious eyes, reaching for him in the night in the tent they shared, breathing hot and eager against his cheek?  
  
They rarely talked at first, but Merlin felt the tie between them each time Arthur left. It pulled taut and left him aching like he’d never ached before. The truth of it was everyone had Arthur wrong. He wasn’t the spoiled, rich daddy’s boy he’d first appeared. He was kind and generous both with the animals and the men, even if he hadn’t understood them at first. Sometimes when they lay awake at night in each other’s arms Arthur would ask Merlin’s advice . . . sometimes they’d fuck until dawn without a wink of sleep. All of it was everything Merlin had ever wanted.  
  
Until the day Arthur told Merlin, ‘I’m marrying a girl.”  
  
“Oh yeah?” Merlin asked. “Who?”  
  
“Guinevere.”  
  
Merlin knew her well enough. She worked in town, a pretty girl. Nice. A sick feeling crept silently over Merlin, icing his skin.  
  
“This won’t change anything between us,” Arthur said, hair still damp from the sweat of their fucking. With the blood rushing in his ears, Merlin wasn’t sure he’d heard correctly.  
  
“Yeah, all right,” he said.  
  
He went to the wedding, watched as Arthur kissed his bride, even went to shake hands and wish them luck. Gwen didn’t know. She took the good wishes not knowing, and Merlin couldn’t even muster guilt.  
  
Arthur had been _his_ first.  
  
The memory of that day still leaves a bitter taste in his mouth, even now as Merlin drives, passing three-axel trucks in the middle of the night on the otherwise deserted highway. Can’t let himself dwell on it, why he’s doing this, the driving. It feels a little like an unwilling surrender and a little like it’s the only choice he has. God help him, he’s never been able to shake Arthur.  
  
He’d shown up at Merlin’s apartment two weeks after his wedding, drunk as a skunk and spewing all sorts of nonsense about love. _Fucking love you fucking love you you you,_ falling into Merlin’s arms, pulling him down to the floor.  
  
“Miss you,” Arthur said, barely prepping Merlin before pressing inside, “Miss you so much . . .”  
  
Merlin learned something that night. Between the two of them, Arthur was more broken. Still, Merlin held him, took it all, and wept, but not so Arthur could see. Arthur would never see him cry.  
  
It was never the same after that, their time together always tainted with the awareness of Arthur’s other life. And when Gwen had their first, then their second, child, Merlin saw the guilt on Arthur’s face . . . he couldn’t bear it.  
  
It wasn’t good enough to have half of Arthur’s heart.  
  
Merlin yawns, scrubs his hand over his face, and slaps his cheek to keep himself from nodding off. The sting erases the harsher sting of the memory.  
  
It won’t be long now. The sign for the ranch comes into sight just as the sun begins to bathe the flat land in cool, early morning light. Merlin’s heart hammers. He’s not prepared for this, no way in hell. What if he’s misinterpreted the card? Maybe Gwen’s absence is only temporary. Maybe Arthur just wants to see an old friend.  
  
But the part of him that knows Arthur’s soul as well as his own understands Arthur would never have sent it if it didn’t mean forever.  
  
He pulls up to the front gate, locked now. That’s different. There’s a high-tech looking call box, and Merlin presses the buzzer, not expecting it to be Arthur’s voice that says “Hello?”  
  
Merlin can barely answer, manages to muster a “Hey . . . It’s me.” Such a stupid thing to say to someone you haven’t seen in ten years.  
  
“Oh,” says Arthur, his voice a whisper, crackling over the speaker. “Shit. You really came.”  
  
“Yeah. I reckon I did.” Merlin gives a weak laugh.  
  
The gate opens without another word.  
  
The rest of the drive is short and the land is beautiful, golden in the growing light. He realizes he’s missed ordinary things: the familiar fence that lines the gravel road, cattle grazing beyond. Dust kicks up under the wheels of his car, indicating how dry it’s been this season. Still, it’s good earth. When he finally left Arthur for real—not the first two times (he’d tried, he’d failed)—but the third and last, Merlin had taken a jar of Kansas soil with him. He still has it rattling around in his trunk, he thinks.  
  
Arthur’s standing on the porch when Merlin pulls up. He’s dressed in worn jeans and a tee shirt. Same fucking hat he used to wear. Merlin’s breath catches. He’s a vision, and Merlin can only sit and stare, hands on the wheel.  
  
When he finally does open the door, the sound of early morning cicadas tickles his ears. It’s already getting warm. His boots kick up more dust as he approaches Arthur, who hasn’t moved at all. He’s got his eyes fixed on Merlin like he can’t really believe he’s here, and for some reason that makes Merlin want to confirm his invitation. He pulls out the postcard from his pocket and holds it up.  
  
“Got this.”  
  
“I hoped you did. But I didn’t think you’d come.”  
  
Merlin swallows. “Me neither.”  
  
“Fuck me, you’re a sight for sore eyes, Merlin Emrys.”  
  
Merlin takes the stairs two-by-two. Arthur draws him into a crushing hug, and Merlin’s eyes, traitors, leak a few tears. He holds on to Arthur, hands fisting the back of his shirt, trying to listen to what Arthur’s telling him but all he can think is _Arthur . . . Arthur . . ._  
  
“—letters I wrote.”  
  
“What letters?” Merlin pulls back for a minute, confused. Up close, Arthur’s face is written with the lines of thirty-five years, eyes flanked by Crow’s feet. Merlin wonders when each of the creases took root and decided to stay.  
  
“I wrote you letters. I never sent them, but . . . yeah. Gwen found ‘em a couple of weeks ago.”  
  
“Shit,” Merlin says, not knowing how else to respond.  
  
“It wasn’t the best way for her to find out about us. But our marriage has never been what it should. Sometimes I regret marrying her in the first place, but then I wouldn’t have my girls . . .” Arthur trails off, looks away.  
  
“Where are they now, the girls?” Merlin asks.  
  
“With their mama in town. Gwen says she’ll give me joint custody . . . I just hope . . . God I love my kids, Merlin.”  
  
“I know. I know you do.” They’re quite for a moment, warm arms around Merlin’s back still squeezing tight.  
  
“It means so much to me . . . that you came.”  
  
There are so many years between them, but Arthur’s broken voice hurts like they’ve never been apart. Merlin does the only thing he can do. He kisses Arthur.  
  
Arthur’s mouth tastes like stale coffee and sleep, his lips chapped from the sun. Merlin runs his hands up Arthur’s back and holds his head, angling his own to get inside with his tongue, to claim the space again for himself, his, _his_. . . God, how he’s missed this, the feel of Arthur’s mouth, how readily he anticipates every move. Lips have memories too, and so do hands. Arthur grips his hips, knowing just where to touch, how firmly to press without bruising.  
  
The words they whisper are everything and nothing because what really matters is the long line of Arthur’s body against his, how it says I’m sorry and I never stopped loving you. Language doesn’t make a difference. It can come later. Right now there are mouths, the clashing of teeth as Merlin learns that the most bruising of kisses can be the most gentle.  
  
Merlin shuts his eyes, lets Arthur kiss his face, his cheeks, and neck as the sun grows hot over their heads.


End file.
